Categories

Meta

Fist bump

This is classic. At left is Juha Sipilä, a millionaire who became Finland’s Prime Minister in May 2015. At right is his Finance Minister Alexander Stubb, a jet-setter and right-wing ideologue who likes to wear expensive suits and maintain a posh lifestyle while he tells ordinary Finns that they must make do with less and less. The two are doing a triumphant “fist bump” to celebrate their crushing of Finland’s labor unions so that workers submit to lower wages and fewer benefits.

Up until mid-2011, Finland vacillated back and forth between having a trade deficit and trade surplus. This happened because Finland’s economy was heavily dependent on exporting cell phones and timber products, including paper, which go through cyclical phases of demand. When the economy was strong, Finland self-righteously condemned countries like Greece, for which no amount of austerity can ever be enough. Average Finns enjoyed very high job security and an average national wage of 25 euros per hour (USD $28.00).

All of that changed with the partial demise of Finland’s cell phone business, plus a shrinking demand for Finland’s forestry products. (Apple made Nokia go from being synonymous with cell phones to being synonymous with obsolete phones. ) The recession became even worse when Finland’s politicians agreed to abide by the USA’s sanctions against Russia, which had been one of Finland’s biggest trading partners, especially in dairy and agricultural products. Even without sanctions, Russia would be buying fewer imports from Finland because of the fall in oil prices. Finland fell into the red zone, and its recession has been worsening for the last four years…

When economic times were good, and euros flowed into Finland, the country had an AAA rating on its sovereign bonds. No more.

Finland is the only Nordic country to have submitted to the euro-scam, and is therefore the only Nordic country that is badly suffering. Denmark and Sweden wisely did not adopt the euro, whereas Iceland and Norway never joined the European Union, let alone the euro-zone.

The two men in the topmost image are doing a fist bump because when economic times were good, Finland’s labor unions were too powerful to crush. Now the unions must submit to the rich owners if workers are to have any jobs at all. Unions have agreed to slashed wages and benefits, and to the elimination of many labor laws. Unions also submitted to longer working hours, lower holiday bonuses, larger pension contributions for workers, and lower pension contributions for employers.

Average Finns are now experiencing the pain that they had smugly wished on Greece. On 11 March 2016, farmers from all over Finland drove their tractors to Helsinki to block city roads and bring the capital city to a standstill. They were protesting the sanctions against Russia, which have badly hurt Finnish farmers. Many had driven their tractors for hundreds of miles.

Thousands of pensioners and students have also taken to the streets. Helsinki University has off 980 people so far.

Prime Minister Juha Sipilä (the millionaire) and his Finance Minister Alexander Stubb want to start with 4 billion euros in sending cuts. Stubb has warned labor unions that if they do not continue to submit to austerity, Stubb will ram even more radical austerity down their throats. This attack on workers is called “internal devaluation.”

From Reuters:

Few economists see any magic wand to boost growth, given how few new industries are making up for weakness of Finland’s electronic and forestry exports. We are all clueless on how to get long term economic growth,” said Markus Jantti, a professor of public finances at Helsinki University.

Here is the “magic wand”…

[1] Dump the euro and go back to using the Finnish markka. If neighboring Sweden doesn’t need the euro, then Finland doesn’t either.

[2] Stop participating in the sanctions against Russia.

[3] Launch massive public works programs like the National Socialists did in 1933, which caused Germany to rise in only five years from Europe’s most depressed economy to Europe’s strongest. Germany went from severe unemployment to having a labor shortage. Or launch things like the “New Deal” programs in the USA, with its Works Progress Administration, its Civilian Conservation Corps, and so on.

Of course, this is not possible, since it would cause the gap between the rich and the rest to not grow so wide.

Some Finns understand that the euro currency must go, but Erkki Liikane, head of the Bank of Finland, says Finland must keep the euro at all costs.

In return for this, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt lets Liikane sit on the ECB committee that makes monetary policy decisions. Central bankers are alien entities that must be kept under very strict control at all times.

That’s just a billboard put up by Finns who don’t like refugees. We don’t know what actually happened (if anything). If it’s any comfort to you, the Finnish and Swedish governments are rounding up thousands of refugees and deporting them. The refugees get free flights back to their home nations. One flight leaves every week back to Iraq. Many are happy to go, since they don’t like the cold climate, they can’t learn the local language (Finnish is very difficult to learn) and they have no jobs, no prospects, and no hope. At least back home they can communicate with each other.

Yeah I read about Sweden’s plan to deport thousands of migrants and, realistically, it might be the best thing to do. Like you said, they cannot find any jobs or housing and neither can the native Swedes (I don’t know about Finland); so from a practical/pragmatic point of view it is probably the best. I feel really bad for the refugees, especially the children, but I feel like mass migration to countries who already have problems of their own will not solve anything.

I only ask that people try to see things through the eyes of refugees. Most of us don’t move unless we are uncomfortable. Unless we are desperate, we don’t drop everything to make a long and perilous journey to some faraway land, not knowing what we will find there. Will it be better? Worse? Will our children die there, or along the way? Will people help us or despise us? Will it be an escape to paradise; or a plunge deeper into hell?

It is lack of human empathy that creates refugees in the first place. European nations cheer the imperialist wars that create refugees, and then they curse the refugees they create. In the eyes of foreigners, we are all rats and vermin when foreigners reduce us to refugees.

Regarding the National Socialists, the “Aryanism” thing was initially a response to Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Germans lived through several generations of being hated, reviled, and considered subhuman. “Aryanism” started as a racial thing (the USA was at least as racist as any other nation) and morphed into a concept of personal excellence regardless of race. The Waffen SS became the most multi-racial fighting force in history up to that time. Many divisions were Muslim. The regular German military had 150,000 Jews, some of which became generals.

Anyway my assertion is that 99% of what you have been told about National Socialist Germany is lies.

By the way, the neo-Nazis do despise me. I know this from experience. Their vision of National Socialist Germany is full of hate and racism. I am 100% white (Scotch-Irish heritage) but in the past when I exposed their errors regarding National Socialist Germany, they exploded in rage. They are mirror images of the militant supremacist Jews they attack. To me they are losers.

I don’t think the Neo-Nazis will hate you more than Jews or Africans, that is unless, you are not white or of mixed race (like me!). On a side note, I don’t know about you but, I get a chuckle every time a southern European, a Slav, or anyone of non-Germanic descent voices support for Nazi beliefs; I mean, do they even know that Hitler considered them inferior to Germanic people? SMH honestly.